The new year has arrived—and with it, the inevitable wave of self-improvement plans and resolutions. Along with pledging to lose weight or kick a coffee habit, why not resolve to be a better manager in 2013?

From practicing your job to avoiding the ‘reply-all’ button, Journal reporters and management experts offer tips on how to do it.

For many, time spent at the office counts as “work.” But not all work is created equal.

There is a difference between doing things you already know how to do and doing things that force you to stretch and improve your skills, according to psychology professor K. Anders Ericsson, who specializes in performance psychology, or the study of how people become good at what they do. A person in a new job usually spends some time training to get up to speed, but after that, his or her abilities tend to plateau, says Mr. Ericsson.